There aren’t many major releases in January, so a smaller film managed to shake things up. The horror-comedy M3gan shimmied to the #2 position, thanks to a cool marketing campaign reminiscent of the one used to promote Smile. Excellent reviews and good word of mouth also helped.
However, the #1 movie remains Avatar: The Way of Water. Earning $45 million, this sequel has now passed the half-billion mark at the domestic box office. Globally, it has surpassed $1.7 billion, making it the seventh-highest-grossing movie of all time and the fifth-highest-grossing movie overseas.
The Way of Water managed to hit the half-billion mark in the U.S. on its 23rd day of release. This is faster than Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and the first Avatar (both of which hit that mark on their 32nd days of release) and Top Gun: Maverick, which scored that on its 30th day.
Can it possibly hit two billion? It certainly seems possible at this point, especially considering that most of the people seeing it are springing for premium tickets on IMAX, Dolby, or other bigger screens and in 3D.
But the bigger news is that Blumhouse’s M3gan. The film was made for a meager $12M and raked in $30.2M, blasting it well into the black in just one weekend. Reviews are excellent as it has a 94% Rotten Tomatoes critical ranking. Its audience score, however, is significantly lower at 79%, which is very odd for a horror movie. Usually, audiences are much more receptive than critics.
More than half of the audience for M3gan was female. Exiting viewers gave it a B via CinemaScore and 3½ stars via PostTrak.
Blumhouse has already announced that a sequel is in the works.
Universal’s head of domestic distribution, Jim Orr, stated:
“M3GAN had an incredible debut this weekend, and rightly so, certainly not surprising that a collaboration between Blumhouse and James Wan’s Atomic Monster would produce such a fun, creepy, thrilling story that audiences are piling into theatres to see. M3GAN over-performed industry expectations and normal grossing patterns all weekend, demonstrating great word of mouth as reinforced by its tremendous critical and audience reaction scores and no doubt pointing to a great run at the domestic box office ahead.”
Thanks to the positive reception, it is believed that M3gan will have strong legs in the weeks ahead, including next weekend, which leads into Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on Monday.
Also performing impressively is Sony’s A Man Called Otto starring Tom Hanks. This is expected to be a contender during awards season, which is why the studio gave it a very small release at the tail end of December. It’s still only playing in just over 600 theaters and yet it still managed to crack the Top Five with a fairly modest $4.2M.
But just for comparison, The Way of Water is playing on 4,340 screens, M3gan on 3,509, and the #3 movie, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish on 3,919.
A Man Called Otto is a remake of a 2015 Swedish film, A Man Called Ove, which was based on a novel by Fredrik Backman. This adult-skewing title played well across the U.S., appealing to the same audience that made Top Gun: Maverick such a smash last year.
Along those same lines, audiences love A Man Called Otto, with its RT audience score at 95%. However, while Sony may have hoped that this picture would be awards season catnip, that doesn’t seem likely as critics don’t like it. Its RT critical score is a weak 67%.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever rounded out the Top Five, but is winding down as Disney has announced that this picture will arrive on Disney+ at the beginning of February.
Top Five:
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- Avatar 2 (Disney) – 3-day $45M/Total $516.7M/Wk 4
- M3GAN (Universal)- 3-day $30.2M/Wk 1
- Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (Universal) – 3-day $13.1M/Total $87.7M/Wk 3
- A Man Called Otto (Sony) – 3-day $4.2M/Total $4.285M/Wk 2
- Wakanda Forever (Disney) – 3-day $3.39M/Total $445.4M/ Wk 9
As mentioned, next weekend is MLK weekend in the U.S., so that could boost box offices, but there isn’t that much coming out. A Man Called Otto is opening even wider. Brand new releases include the sci-fi film The Devil Conspiracy, Gerard Butler’s latest action flick Plane, and the remake of House Party, produced by LeBron James who also appears in the film as himself.
Will you be heading to the cinema? What do you plan to check out?
